We have to recognise that we do live in an unjust world—a stupidly unjust world. Bad people often prosper, while goodness and virtue carry no guarantee of wealth, fame, power, or even security.
But prospering is not the same as flourishing. Injustice can only secure the external goods of life. Though injustice can make us wealthy and powerful, it cannot make us wise, tranquil, or contented.
The tyrant is the perfect test case of what I’m saying. The tyrant, almost by definition, is the most unjust person, seemingly enjoying the greatest possible success. Of course, not every unjust person is a tyrant, but the tyrant reveals, in its most extreme form, what injustice does to the person who practises it.
Seneca and Nero
The Stoic philosopher Seneca, who lived in the first century CE, once wrote a long letter to the tyrannical Roman emperor, Nero. In this letter, he warns Nero that the most powerful person in a tyranny may also be the least free. We don’t know whether he actually sent the letter, but a large part of it has come down to us. It’s called On Clemency. Clemency, says Seneca, is the trait that most distinguishes a king from a tyrant—and by winning admiration and loyalty, helps to keep the king safe and free. The tyrant, on the other hand, becomes the prisoner of his own power: he is hated because he is feared, and must make himself feared because he is hated. It’s a vicious cycle. In the end, he cannot travel freely or trust even his closest advisors. He cannot sleep soundly in his bed or take his meals without fearing that someone might have poisoned his food.
Few tyrants die in their own bed, and so it proved also with Nero, who ended his own life to evade capture. He did not even have the courage to wield the dagger: his freedman had to help him drive it into his throat. His final, deluded words were: Qualis artifex pereo—‘What an artist dies in me!’ Perhaps his last thought was of Seneca.
Plato’s Tyrant
If Seneca showed us the tyrant’s political prison, Plato showed us his psychological prison, the prison inside him. The tyrant’s soul is ruled by lawless appetites which he can neither control nor satisfy. Thus, the man who appears supremely free is in fact a slave to his own deranged psychology. He has conquered everyone except himself.
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates calculates, by some fanciful Platonic mathematics, that the true king is precisely 729 times happier than the tyrant!
How to Guard Against Tyrants
But philosophy cannot content itself with pointing out that the tyrant is miserable. The fate and suffering of the tyrant hardly make up for all his injustices—for all the injustices that he imposes upon others on his way up and then on his way down. That’s why we need to have much stronger safeguards against tyrants.
To guard against the rise of a tyrant, here are three things that we could do. First, we need to make sure that a career in politics remains desirable to decent people—or end up being governed only by power-hungry people. Second, we need to strengthen education so that every citizen can recognise the tyrant’s old bag of tricks. And third, we need to bolster constitutions and institutions so that they are able to arrest the rise of a would-be tyrant, no matter how insistent or popular they may be. We have put astronauts into space, invented nuclear reactors and artificial intelligence—so this, surely, is not beyond us.
Prospering vs Flourishing
So, yes, we live in an unjust world—a stupidly unjust world. Bad people prosper, while innocent people suffer. But prospering is not the same as flourishing. Only a life well lived can lead to the true goods of life: wisdom, freedom, tranquillity, contentedness. These are all internal goods which external goods may support, but can never guarantee.
But to lead a just life is not merely a winning strategy. It is also a refusal to become a part of the problem.
